Booed at Home and Down 23, the Nuggets Come Back to Beat the Pelicans in OT

By The Arena Staff

DENVER, Oct. 24, 2026 — For most of Saturday night, the Ball Arena crowd had one thing to say to the Denver Nuggets, and it wasn't cheering. By the end, the boos were long gone.

Jamal Murray scored 42 points, Nikola Jokic had 35 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists, and the short-handed Nuggets came back from 23 points down to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 141-135 in overtime in their home opener, the Associated Press reported.

New Orleans spent the first half doing whatever it wanted. The Pelicans shot 65.9% before the break, according to AP, and scored 73 points, 38 of them in the first quarter, per Denver Sports. They went up 23 for the second time at 95-72 late in the third and still led 108-89 going into the fourth.

Denver Sports reported that the crowd turned on the home team as the gap grew, and coach David Adelman didn't sugarcoat it afterward. "We were dismal the first half," he said.

The comeback started with the bench. A group with Aaron Gordon, Marvin Bagley, Tyus Jones, DeMar DeRozan and rookie Trevon Brazile opened the fourth on a 12-4 run. The starters came back and kept chipping, and the last 90 seconds of regulation swung the game. Jokic hit a 3, Murray answered a Zion Williamson jumper with a step-back 3, and Brazile picked off a Williamson pass, Denver Sports reported.

Down two with 16.8 seconds left, Murray was fouled on a 3-point try. He made two of the three free throws to tie it at 126. Jokic's pressure then forced Trey Murphy III to lose the ball out of bounds with a second left, sending it to overtime.

That's where Jokic and Brazile finished it. Jokic scored eight points and grabbed seven rebounds in the extra period. Brazile, playing his second NBA game, blocked Saddiq Bey's 3-point attempt on the first possession and hit a corner 3 with 1:25 left that made it 133-129, according to AP. He had seven of his 17 points in overtime, while New Orleans went 1 for 11 from the field.

"The biggest compliment you can give a guy that's a rookie in our league is that the veterans on his team trust him," Adelman said of Brazile, per Denver Sports.

The triple-double was Jokic's 199th in the regular season, second only to the 209 Russell Westbrook had when he retired, AP noted. Counting the playoffs, it was his 222nd, one more than Westbrook's combined total, The Athletic reported.

Murray's night was a sharp turn from Thursday's opener in Oklahoma City, when he scored six points on 2-of-11 shooting. On Saturday he went 12 of 25, including 8 of 16 from 3-point range, according to Denver Sports.

Denver did it without Cam Johnson and Alpha Diallo, and with Julian Strawther and Spencer Jones still out. Murphy led New Orleans with 26 points, Dejounte Murray had 22, and Williamson and Derik Queen each scored 17. The Pelicans are 0-3 under first-year coach Jamahl Mosley.

The Nuggets host Golden State on Monday. They see New Orleans again Wednesday, this time in New Orleans.

Share-card photo: Jamal Murray in 2020, by All-Pro Reels via Wikimedia Commons.jpg), CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.